Very Close Match on Y-DNA with Someone of a Different Surname

[lelovett]

Hello,
Would be grateful to hear from all of you experts since I am not. Here's where we're stuck:

My brother's Y-DNA test, last name Lovett, registered with the Lovett Surname Project, turned out to be almost an exact match with someone by the last name of Terry. Genetic distance 1. Everything matches for Y-DNA 37 with the exception of CDY, and in that case, none of the 6 men who match my brother have the same CDY numbers. We can find where our line connects to all but 1 of the other men with the same last name.

This has to be a NPE on the part of this other person, but we can't figure out how. While his last name, Terry, appears in the land records and church records of the very small local area where our ancestors lived, the name doesn't appear on our family tree, so there is no obvious place where someone might have had a child and handed it over to a brother-in-law or something like that. How do we go about eliminating possibilities to figure out how many generations back this event might have happened? Then we would at least know which group of men to start investigating.

My brother has not run a Family Finder (autosomal) test but I have and Patrick Terry and I have no overlap. Would it necessarily be different if my brother did the test? Since Patrick and my brother are listed as genetic distance 1 on the Lovett surname project, that led us to believe the NPE was somewhat recent but I have since heard otherwise.

All suggestions welcome.

Laura

[georgian1950]

Sounds like a Lovett having an affair with Mr. Terry's wife. Or maybe a Lovett gets an unmarried woman pregnant and for whatever reason she knows that Mr. Lovett can't or won't marry her. Thus she quickly finds a Mr. Terry to marry before it is obvious that she is carrying a baby. I'd concentrate on developing the family trees for the Terry's in the local area and see if there is an opportunity for such a happening. Has Mr. Terry been forthcoming with his family tree?

[Jim Barrett]

Two suggestions: (1) your brother and Mr. Terry should upgrade to 67 or 111 markers (2) your brother and Mr. Terry should both get an autosomal test with the same company. Both men getting an autosomal test would be the cheapest way to go. If there is a close relationship the autosomal test will show it. Since both men have already tested at FTDNA ordering Family Finder would save to time and cost of ordering tests from a different company.

Family trees lie, DNA doesn't.

[John McCoy]

Remember that actual third cousins have about a 10 percent chance of NOT matching on autosomal tests such as the Family Finder. For 4th cousins, the frequency of non-matching is about 50 percent. So, it is likely that the relationship of you and "Mr. Terry" is at least 3rd cousins or even more remote. But that still leaves you with no direct evidence of a close relationship. What to do? Upgrading the Y DNA tests is likely just to confirm what you already know, that there is suggestive similarity from Y DNA. It won't give you definitive evidence of the degree of relationship. Another plan is to compare Mr. Terry (and if possible, some of his known cousins who should share the suspect ancestry) with some of your known relatives who should share the Lovett ancestry. Even better if there are relatives from the previous generation, since they would be one generation closer to the "event", and thus be expected to share about twice as much DNA.

I have many instances where actual third cousins don't match me, but they do match the other known third cousins. The same is true, to a lesser extent, for my known 4th cousins. Your relatives will have inherited different segments from the common ancestor, so if you don't match, one of your relatives might have been luckier and got the chromosome segment that will prove the case.